Peter Swire

Professor of Law and Expert on Privacy and Cybersecurity

Highlight:

Washington, DC (March 6, 2015) – The International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), among its over 20,000 members, honored Peter Swire, an expert on privacy and cyber security and a professor of law, with the 2015 Privacy Leadership Award. Swire was recognized for his continued commitment to the privacy field in tackling emerging privacy and security issues in public policy, academia and industry.

Peter Swire has been a leading privacy and cyberlaw scholar, government leader, and practitioner since the rise of the Internet in the 1990’s. In 2013, he became the Nancy J. and Lawrence P. Huang Professor of Law and Ethics at the Georgia institute of Technology. Swire teaches in the Scheller College of Business, with appointments by courtesy with the College of Computing and School of Public Policy. He is senior counsel with the law firm of Alston & Bird LLP.

Swire served as one of five members of President Obama’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology. Prior to that, he was co-chair of the global Do Not Track process for the World Wide Web Consortium. He is a Senior Fellow with the Future of Privacy Forum.

Under President Clinton, Swire was the Chief Counselor for Privacy, in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, the only person to date to have U.S. government-wide responsibility for privacy policy. Under President Obama, he was Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy.

The White Paper draws on Swire's background as a scholar of both EU data protection law and US surveillance law. It addresses serious misunderstandings of US national security law, reflected in official statements made in the Schrems case and elsewhere.

Peter Swire has joined Alston & Bird's Privacy & Data Security Practice. Along with his continued full-time position at Georgia Tech, under university rules Peter will be senior counsel at Alston & Bird.